Fire Emblem: Awakening, A Perspective on Casual Mode

With Fire Emblem Awakening landing in the US mere days from now and my hype at an all-time high, I thought I would write a piece on my current fixation. As far as things go, permadeath and fire emblem go together like peanut butter and jelly; any series veteran will tell you that to experience the true fire emblem experience, you must play classic mode ( which makes the death of any of your units permanent). I may not be the series topmost expert or anything, but I have played the original Fire Emblem on the GBA and Sacred Stones and passed them both so I know the frustration and satisfaction of playing through a tough campaign with permadeath on but in a game as tactical as Fire Emblem, I belive Casual mode is anything but casual.

Fire Emblem is undeniably similar to chess, not 100% similar but the two definitely share some DNA. The reason why I bring this is up is, in chess, both players move their pieces across the board and outsmarting your opponent is the way to win the game ( ultimately taking their king) but in the process of taking your opponent's king, often times it is necessary to give up one of your pieces to places yourself in a position to devastate the opponent. Often times in the original, I would find myself in situations where I could end an engagement, but one of my characters would have to die in the process, but because of permadeath, if I did make that sacrifice, I would lose that unit for the rest of the game; so, I had to regroup and take one or two more turns in order to win without anyone dying. While this may not seem like a big deal, it definitely is a bigger deal when a random archer pops up in the field and kills my pegasus knight, making me restart the battle and lose minutes to hours of game-play because I am playing Classic mode, whereas in Casual mode the battle may still be salvageable as long as I keep my wits about me.

The problem with Classic more, and permadeath, is that no one really adheres to it. If someone is playing the game in Classic mode and one of their character dies, they will most likely turn off the game and restart the battle in order to continue to keep all their units. Jason Schreier, who writes the phenomenal Random Encounters articles writes, "if you're going to just restart the game every time you lose someone, why even bother using permadeath in the first place?" While he does concede, like me, that permadeath does force you to play more cautiously and strategically, he comes to the conclusion that it's not a really fun experience to hit the reset button over and over again. The conclusion that he came to was that he would play Awakening with permadeath on and if one of his characters died, he would let them die, no matter what. That is actually pretty admirable, and certainly a different option to an exercise in resetting over and over when a character dies. I on the other hand, have no wish for the ultimate challenge, or to prove myself to anyone, so I will be playing on Casual mode content with the fact that it will provide enough challenge and I will not need to reset my game every time one of my characters die.

Veterans treat casual mode as a inferior way of playing Fire Emblem, but in other tactical games, such as chess, it is sometimes necessary to strategically sacrifice a piece in order to win the game, in essence, you lose the battle in order to win the war. I believe that while Classic mode makes things more challenging, Casual mode retains all the strategic aspects of the game. Plus, what is the point of playing in Classic mode if you are gonna make the point of the mode moot?